The morning after: Emmy noms and nons

Tim Goodman, EXAMINER TELEVISION CRITIC

Published 4:00 am, Friday, July 24, 1998

PASADENA - The cable industry is crowing, the networks are moaning, actors are whining, and all those publicists who woke up at 4 a.m. and got in front of a phone to call their anxious clients are sleeping soundly.

It's Day Two in Hollywood, the post-Emmys carnage. A time when spinning and whining take center stage, and the traditional Emmy oversights have left egos blacker than an Armani suit on awards night.

Right off the bat, the National Cable Television Association sent out a release touting 139 nominations from 15 different cable channels, a new record for the industry. Simultaneously, the networks noted that if they could spend as many millions as, say HBO, they'd make better movies, too.

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Actors here knew immediately. The phone either rang or it didn't. In an odd ritual, publicists get up early, go to the live announcements from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (or watch it live on E! if they're lazy), then check off the names of their clients. Who got the nom, as they say here. And who didn't.

Then the calls went out to the sleepy thespians. Emmy nominations - and especially Emmy wins - help build careers, give second chances, propel stars out of television to the big screen, even.

George Clooney didn't get the call. Oversight? You be the judge. Jerry Seinfeld's phone didn't ring with news of a sympathetic nomination. Neither did Candice Bergen's. Five-thirty in the morning: Silence. No one wants that.

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"Mad About You" fell out of the race. "Homicide" never got in it. There's a litany of potential oversights - as always - and it's almost as interesting as those who did get the nod - whoops, the nom.

If Paul Reiser can be nominated for lead actor in a comedy series, maybe the rules need to be stretched to include ensemble casts, like "Friends." All three male actors on that show are funnier. More to the point, why wasn't

"Friends" even nominated for comedy series? It sure beats "3rd Rock From the Sun" for cleverness.

While it was great to see Andre Braugher back for best actor in a drama, nothing can make up for the horrible slight of leaving him out the season before last, easily his best performance year. Well, maybe winning will make up for it. Poor Dylan McDermott of "The Practice" got snubbed entirely. In favor of David Duchovny? Time for a change.

Although cable made some major inroads, you'd have to think that its women, particularly in series from A&E, could have fit in better in the lead actress category than Roma Downey or even Gillian Anderson, who hasn't had a third emotion on "The X-Files" in five years.

Is Calista Flockhart from "Ally McBeal" the only funny person on that show? Clearly there could have been more. Same goes for the male actors. And just an aside: Isn't Flockhart a pretty good dramatic actress as well? How about Tracey Ullman? True, she gets the nom for performance in a variety or music program, but that's being too tight with labels. Her "Tracey Takes On" for HBO is a comedy series. Surely she's funnier than Patricia Richardson on "Home Improvement." Why no African Americans in comedy? Or maybe just this obvious why: Kirstie Alley?

The supporting actor and actress categories could be fought over all night. Most of Hollywood is a supporting something or other. This is where the truly great actors make a stand. But no one from "Homicide" or "Oz" or many of the other fine, lesser-known vehicles that crowd the dial got any nominations.

Hollywood is about front-runners and hype, no question about it.

If you were in a failed show, forget it. Otherwise Kevin Anderson walks off with best actor for "Nothing Sacred." What about all those no-names in "Brooklyn South" ? They weren't "stars," and the show got the ax, but they could certainly act.

And clearly the youth movement doesn't count for anything. Nobody from "Party of Five," "Dawson's Creek," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" or "Moesha" got noticed in the major categories.

The continuing blindness toward "Homicide" is criminal, given that the Emmy people seem to think the only shows worth a mention are "ER," "Law & Order" and

"NYPD Blue." All of those are 10 p.m. shows, just like

"Homicide." Somebody needs to stay home on Fridays more often.

Other slights were less obvious. One of the worst ongoing Emmy traits is to giddily be seduced by big-name cameos on popular shows. The guest actor in a comedy series nomination field has been uniformly embarrassing for years. Now we get Lloyd Bridges, Mel Brooks, John Cleese and Nathan Lane as the big names. You wouldn't think this category contains the biggest oversight of the year, but it does. Jim Carrey's performance on the season finale of

"The Larry Sanders Show" was absolutely brilliant. Nothing even comes close. What a shame.

There might be a lot of rah-rah boosterism in this corner for anything "Homicide" (it's a conceit based on quality, dipped in anger), but at least the Emmy people nailed it with Vincent D'Onofrio's performance as a guest actor on that series as a man virtually sliced in two by a subway train. It was the most compelling dramatic hour of all of last season.

But still, that Carrey oversight in comedy is unforgivable. And if you want to get really nit-picky, talk to almost anyone in the comedy business here and they'll tell you that some of the greatest comedic moments happened when stars dropped in on "The Larry Sanders Show."

Cable can celebrate all it wants, and rightly so. But somebody ought to be raising the roof about obvious oversights. "From the Earth to the Moon" had not one nomination in the acting category, which means it got 17 strokes but comes off like nobody really watched it.

HBO's reputation is great, and it did get nominated for three TV movies, but "Bright Shining Lie" shouldn't have been one of them. A far superior effort - meaning another war movie shown a day after "Bright Shining Lie" - was Showtime's "Thanks of a Grateful Nation." Showtime was robbed, plain and simple.

Although Comedy Central was giddy about its "South Park" nomination for animation, clearly "Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist" was a huge Emmy mistake. That's a great show. Same goes for "Space Ghost: Coast to Coast" on Cartoon Network.

The children's programming category was an outright sham. Anybody not voting for Nickelodeon's "Blue's Clues" just hasn't turned on their TV set. What a joke. That show should have been a runaway winner.

Another Emmy goof came by eliminating ESPN from consideration for anything. Clearly its "Outside the Lines" program is Emmy-worthy for a nonfiction award.

Some decisions - across the board for quality - made no sense. PBS gets 14 Emmy nominations? Yeah, not a lot of greatness there. Same goes for A&E, which got a measly two, and Nickelodeon with three. Turn the channel!

Maybe that's what awards shows like the Emmys are really all about. To rile us up and make us even more supportive of our favorites. In the end, if we don't like the Emmy telecast, we can just turn the channel.&lt;